Exploitative leadership and employee innovative behaviour in China: a moderated mediation framework

This study uses ego depletion theory to explore the cross-level effect of exploitative leadership on employee innovative behaviour. It examines the mediating role of thriving at work and the moderating role of team task conflict. Using data collected from 371 employees and their direct supervisors from 79 work units in China, a multi-level path analysis is used to test a cross-level moderated mediation model. The results show that exploitative leadership negatively affects employee innovative behaviour via the mediation of thriving at work, which is moderated by team task conflict. Implications for research and practice are fully discussed in the paper.